John Paul II takes first step towards sainthood in Rome

Beatification of the late pope John Paul II in the Vatican City presided over by his successor, Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI kisses the glass reliquary containing the blood of the late Pope John Paul II during his beatification mass in Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican City, Rome. Photograph: Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

More than a million Roman Catholics set aside the scandals that have rocked their church to take part in a jubilant beatification of their late pope, John Paul II.

The Polish pontiff who helped speed the fall of communism in Europe was placed just a step from sainthood at a ceremony in St Peter's Square presided over by his successor, Benedict XVI. Looking out at a congregation that stretched half a mile down the broad avenue leading to the river Tiber, the pope said John Paul had "reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress".

Benedict said the man who could now be referred to as Blessed Karol Wojtyla turned back "with the strength of a titan ... a tide which appeared irreversible".

On the square's colonnades, one of John Paul's sayings was spelled out in giant letters: "Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors to Christ." Benedict said his predecessor had "helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called Christian, to belong to the church, to speak the gospel".

A roar of approval went up when the pope, speaking in Latin, declared John Paul beatified. A tapestry of his charismatic predecessor in his prime was unfurled above the door of the basilica.

Many who converged on Rome had stayed up all night, or slept in churches or on pavements, to get within squinting distance of the ceremony. Crash barriers were erected to keep them from the area around St Peter's Square until just before dawn, but by 2am the pressure of numbers was such that police let them through. Among those who packed the area – many singing and waving flags – were blue-robed Brazilian nuns, young men wrapped in the gold and scarlet Spanish flag, US Legionaries of Christ and more than 50 men and women from the diocese of Abuja in Nigeria, led by their archbishop.

The Poles inevitably predominated, though. Long before the ceremony began, St Peter's Square was an undulating ocean of red and white flags.

The beatification, six years after John Paul's death, was the fastest on record. For some, particularly those critical of his failure to respond to evidence of clerical sex abuse, it was too hasty. "Not for us," said Elzbieta Bielawska, accompanying a group of scouts from Elk in north-eastern Poland. "We believe our pope was not just blessed, but a saint."

Ignacio Fernandez from Barcelona thought about the question for an instant and said: "Sanctity can't be measured in time." The requirement for beatification is proof of a miracle (canonisation needs two).

John Paul is deemed by the Vatican to have interceded to cure a French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand, who was dying of Parkinson's disease, the illness that killed him. She, and the Polish nun who was at his bedside when he died, were given a central role at the beatification as bearers of the reliquary: a silver olive branch containing a phial of John Paul's blood, set aside for a transfusion that never took place.

Representatives of five royal houses, including the Duke of Gloucester, attended. So did seven prime ministers and 16 heads of state, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who flew to Rome on Saturday, once again dodging a ban on his entry into the EU. Though the beatification had been arranged for May Day, when Karol Wojtyla's communist enemies flaunted their armed might, the irony went studiously unacknowledged at the Vatican. The choice of 1 May had "a very precise connotation", the chief organiser, Monsignor Marco Frisina, had told correspondents at a briefing last week. "It is the Sunday of Divine Mercy".